So many storytellers. So little space. Here is a small selection of the writers and historians, the filmmakers and photographers who keep Santa Fe's story alive.

Carmella Padilla

Carmella Padilla has written, "The history of Northern New Mexico is a complex chronicle of resilience and resourcefulness, shaped by individuals with the same stalwart qualities." That belief propels the work of Padilla, a Santa Fe native devoted to telling the stories of her hometown. Her books celebrate the state's chile industry, El Rancho de las Golondrinas and lowriding. Her devotion to arts and culture serves the Spanish Colonial Art Society, the Railyard Park and the International Folk Art Market. Last year, her work earned a Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts.

Evelina Zuni Lucero

Stanford-educated Evelina Zuni Lucero teaches creative writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. Drawing on her roots in the Isleta Pueblo and Ohkay Owingeh communities, she worked as a news reporter, earned a master's degree in English and won praise in 2000 for the novel Night Sky, Morning Star. Lucero used the story to deal with 500 years of trauma for American Indians and developed the characters — a Native political activist jailed for a crime he did not commit and a Pueblo potter — to "illustrate the unresolved pasts shoved into the closet." She has expanded her work as a storyteller to include cultural events that combine music, poetry and oral storytelling.

Source: Institute of American Indian Arts

Myra Ellen Jenkins

From 1960 to 1980, Myra Ellen Jenkins served as state archivist and state historian, earning her place as the final authority on New Mexico history. Known for scrupulous research and devastating wit, Jenkins rescued and protected many of the state's historical documents. Her efforts brought order to the long-neglected archives. She was state historian from 1967, when the Legislature re-established the position, to her retirement, elevating in the public mind the historian's role in society. Her successors included Stanley Hordes, Robert Torrez and Estevan Rael-Gálvez. Jenkins died in 1993.

Source: Santa Fe Living Treasures and Office of the State Historian

George C' de Baca

George C' de Baca learned early to be the family storyteller. As a boy in the 1940s, he ran errands by walking three miles from his grandparents' home in La Cienega to his relatives' farm in remote La Cieneguilla. "Since they were so isolated they were curious to know what was going on," recalled C' de Baca. "I told them what little I knew." From that modest start, C' de Baca has taken family history to the limit, and why not? His family tree has deep roots in the Santa Fe area. His book, The Eden of La Cienega, published in 1998, tells of early life in that representative Hispanic village of Northern New Mexico.

Source: Mora Family Stories by George C' de Baca

Fantasia Lonjose

Majestic and inspiring described Fantasia Lonjose's work in 2007, as she competed in the national finals of a poetry recitation and interpretation competition. Lonjose's accomplishment came as a member of the Santa Fe Indian School Spoken Word Club. Under the direction of teacher Jim McLaughlin, club members found a modern way to honor their ancestors' tradition of storytelling. The students tell stories of their ancestors and ceremonies and give voice to the forces in their worlds. The young storytellers have attracted the attention of The New York Times, a documentary filmmaker for HBO and the organizer of a cultural exchange in Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania.

Leonora F. Curtin Paloheimo

The sites and sounds of the Spanish Colonial period come to life at El Rancho de las Golondrinas thanks to Leonora F. Curtin Paloheimo. Her family bought the La Cienega property in the 1930s, and she and her husband started a living museum replicating colonial village life and authentic old structures. The museum welcomes teachers and students for tours and workshops. Before transforming the ranch into the museum, Leonora Curtin Paloheimo, a California native, worked to preserve Native languages and revive Spanish Colonial arts and crafts.

Source: El Rancho de las Golondrinas

Tom Chávez

Tom Chávez, historian and writer, was for 20 years the director of the Palace of the Governors and then director of the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque. He drew inspiration from his uncle, Fray Angélico Chávez, distinguished priest, historian, poet and artist who died in 1996. Tom Chávez described the essence of the historian as storyteller in the introduction to his book of New Mexico history: "an opportunity to view, and learn from, our predecessors, our ancestors."

Joe Sando

Joe Sando of Jemez Pueblo is a historian, teacher and writer who has spent his career educating all people about Pueblo culture and history. His books include Pueblo Nations: Eight Centuries of Pueblo Indian History and Pueblo Profiles: Cultural Identity through Centuries of Change. He and Herman Agoyo co-authored Po'pay: Leader of the First American Revolution. Sando was the longtime director of the Institute of Pueblo Study and Research at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque.

Source: Museum of Indian Arts and Culture

Alice Corbin Henderson

Tuberculosis brought poet Alice Corbin Henderson from Chicago in 1916, and she became the leader of writers and artists in the early 20th century. Recognized as a poet before moving to Santa Fe, Corbin was co-founder of a magazine that popularized the new poetry of Carl Sandburg, Ezra Pound and Witter Bynner. Corbin died in 1949. Her contemporaries included three distinguished writers who lived into the 1960s: Ina Cassidy, who supported the arts and cultural preservation through her writing; Sara Woolfolk McComb, an advocate for American Indian rights and host of the annual Poets' Roundup; and native Santa Fean Ruth Laughlin Barker Alexander, a journalist specializing in nonfiction and historical fiction.

Source: Fairview Cemetery history by Corinne Sze

Georgia Perez

A dream inspired Georgia Perez, and an eagle circling in the sky showed her the way. Perez, a member of Nambé Pueblo, wrote four books promoting healthy living for children. The four books tell the story of an American Indian boy who learns the keys to living a healthy life from a bald eagle. Perez began writing the Eagle Books series in 2002 after a vision came to her as she slept. "In my dream, the eagle was showing me how life for Native Americans used to be and some things that Native people should do to be healthy once again," Perez said. Soon after, an eagle actually appeared in the high sky, and Perez realized that an eagle, if given a voice in her writing, could effectively get through to children.

Marc Simmons

Marc Simmons never stops trying to make history a delight. For nearly 50 years, he has told New Mexico's story by wrapping doctorate-level research inside an easy, narrative style. Working at a manual typewriter in a house he built off the beaten path, Simmons churns out history for the masses, more than 40 books and hundreds of articles. Over the years, he has written a weekly column for The New Mexican and has several children's books to his credit. His expertise is wide-ranging — from the Spanish archives to Billy the Kid.